Golf Ball Fittings With ScanMyGolfBall App

Golf Ball Fittings With ScanMyGolfBall App

Golf club fittings have become a norm among serious — and even casual — golfers. I am frequently asked what by friends for club recommendations, and my answer is always the same: here are a few that I like, but ultimately, you need to get fitted.

But what about golf balls?

Too often I think players default to pro level balls, when it is entirely possible (probable?) that another (and possibly cheaper) ball will do just as good or better.

But which ball? What compression? How many layers? What kind of cover?

Now — of course — “there’s an app for that.”

ScanMyGolfBall (company website) is a free app for your phone that recommends golf balls based on a golfer’s answers to questions on swing speed, flight path, trajectory, short game and so on.

Various golf ball manufacturers have for years had web pages that do the same thing, but their sites obviously focus on their own balls.

ScanMyGolfBall is brand agnostic and does not try to sell you anything.

On the other hand, the Bridgestone site claims to base its recommendations on 300,000 live launch monitor fittings, and I am not at all certain where the ScanMyGolfBall data comes from.

My answers produced recommendations of the Srixon Soft Feel, Bridgestone e6 or Callaway ERC Soft.

Clicking on the recommendations showed the layer count, cover material and compression. It also gives ratings on how the ball matches with swing speed, greenstopping spin and feel.

I played and reviewed the Bridgestone e6 a while back and thought it was a good fit for my game, but have since settled on a Vice Drive. It’s long and cheap. But perhaps I should go back and give the e6 another try.

The ScanMyGolfBall app also has a function that allows you to photograph a golf ball to add it to a sort of virtual inventory of balls. Once you’ve done that, it gives you the ball’s specs and quantifies how it fits your game.

A faster way to get the specs on a ball, however, is to just manually add it from a couple of drop down menus. I found that much faster than photographing it.

ScanMyGolfBall will also use photographs tell you how much damage a particular ball has suffered. I’m not sure of the utility of that, though, as I can just eyeball it.

A press release for the app says that it has 500 golf ball models in its database. The most scanned manufacturers, according to app founder Tim Chase, are: 1. Callaway, 2. Titleist, 3. TaylorMade, 4. Srixon, 5. Bridgestone. The top 5 most scanned golf ball models included 1. Titleist ProV1, 2. Callaway Supersoft, 3. Titleist ProV1x, 4. Callaway Chrome Soft, 5. Kirkland Performance +.

I think this app has potential. It would be neat if there was a way to integrate it with one of the consumer level launch monitors, like the Garmin Approach R10. I’d also like to know more about how how they generate the data upon which their recommendations are based.